


12 Days of Confessions

by therealmccoy



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealmccoy/pseuds/therealmccoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones has a secret admirer. He's not happy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	12 Days of Confessions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torchwood1701 (lovethecoat51)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovethecoat51/gifts).



> Written for the advent calendar hosted by Space_Wrapped on LJ.

**1.**

_I love your smile._

That’s how it begins. With a small white piece of replicated paper that McCoy finds on his desk when he comes in to start his shift. He looks out into Sickbay, hoping to see if there’s any clue of who it can be from, but everyone seem engrossed in their tasks for the day. No one is paying attention to what’s going on in the CMO’s office. There are no watchful eyes trying to see what his reaction might be.

He writes it off as a prank and decides not to fall for it. That little piece of paper gets crumbled up and thrown into the recycling, and McCoy goes back to his day.

 

 

**2.**

_I love that look you get when you go into doctor mode._

The next day, another piece of paper is waiting on his desk. McCoy frowns. He wonders if maybe isn’t a joke, but to him, the statement sounds almost sarcastic. He doesn’t even consider finding the culprit before throwing the paper away.

**3.**

_I love how you fuss over your hair._

On the third day, he reacts with an annoyed groan and throws the paper away without even properly reading it. He definitely takes it as mockery. Someone is making fun of him, trying to make a fool out of him, and he won’t fall for it. Won’t give them the satisfaction of any kinda reaction to it.

If he just ignores it, he tells himself, whoever is doing this will grow bored and find someone else to play mind games with.

 

**4.**

_I love how you care about everyone. Even Spock._

The sleepy peace of a Sickbay right on the verge of coming to life for alpha shift gets shattered by a roared “Bullshit!” coming from the CMO’s office.

No one knows what’s going on. Most don’t dare ask and those who would have are deterred by the scowl McCoy wears for the rest of the day. It ruins not only McCoy’s day, but also the day of any poor soul who crosses his path.

**5**.

_I love your accent._

Instead of yesterday’s angry outburst, McCoy only lets out an annoyed grunt as he sinks into his chair. He doesn't have that much of an accent, A tinge, maybe, but it only really comes out when he's upset, or excited. For the first time, McCoy starts wondering who his tormenter is. Who is close enough to really get under his skin. It was true that most people on the ship had encountered him while angry. That wasn’t too far a stretch considering all the crap they had been through since he had become CMO of the Enterprise and the kind of suicide missions his captain seemed to favor, but who the hell listened to him enough to pick up on how his accent thickened when his emotions got to him? Who paid that close attention to him? Not just the accent, either. Now that he thinks about it, every little thing those cards say tells him that there is someone on this ship who actually sees him. At least, they think they do.

This time, he doesn’t throw the card away. Instead he stashes it in one of his desk drawers, but he still tells himself that this is all just a load of crap. And despite not being willing to admit it even to himself, it hurts him that someone would go through all of this just to pull a trick on him. Before the end of his shift, he sits down to write back to the trickster. He means to only write a short line to tell them to stop, but by the time he leaves his office, there is a three-page rant on his desk. Handwritten, not printed like the cards are, because he wants the person to know that it’s from him.

 

**6.**

_I love your rants._

He comes back the next day to find an empty desk. Almost. His letter is gone, but in it’s place there is a new white card. Still in print, still no clue as to who it may be. Whoever you are, McCoy thinks as he runs his thumb over the black lettering, you’re a damn bastard.

He ponders leaving another note in return, but that clearly doesn’t and will not get the desired reaction. If anything, it seems his mystery “admirer” is amused by the fact that they got a reaction out of him. Exactly as he first suspected. They’re only in this to get a few cheap laughs out of his freak out, and he walked right into it.

He won’t do that mistake again. Won’t play this game.

 

 

**7.**

_I love how your eyebrows have their own language._

McCoy’s eyebrow answers by shooting up. He finds he’s glad that, at least, the letters show up in his private office and not in a public location where others can see his reactions. Not that it makes a difference, because his imagination does a beautiful job of showing him how they’re probably laughing at him right now.

For the rest of the day, people wonder what’s wrong with their CMO. In their eyes, he seems detached and unresponsive compared to what they’ve come to expect from him. They don’t know that he is doing his very best to keep from arching his brows at everything. Maybe if he teaches himself a better poker face, people won’t mock him for it?

 

**8.**

_I love your hands._

McCoy looks at them. Looks at them for a long time while he tries to figure out what there is to love about his hands. He does feel a certain pride over his hands, that much is true. They are the hands of a healer, of one who has dedicated his life and soul to helping others, to fixing them when they break, and they are his livelihood. He even has them insured, but are they worth loving? These hands fail as often as they help. There’s blood on them; the blood of his own father. More than once have they clenched into fists and done harm, despite him swearing never to do so.

They’re not worth loving, McCoy says to Jim later that day. After he has explained what has been going on for the past week, and asked his closest friend if he knows anything about this. Jim swears he doesn’t, promises to scour the security tapes to see who has been in McCoy’s office, and quietly suggests that maybe it’s not a prank. Maybe whoever is doing this means it and is just looking for a way to show how they feel.

McCoy snorts, finishes his drink, and suggests that maybe it’s time for another psych evaluation because the captain clearly doesn’t have his head on straight.

 

**9**.

_I love your humility._

McCoy decides against waiting for Jim to get back to him about the security feeds. After his shift, he seeks out Scotty. Technically, he’s not Security, but there aren’t a lot of reds on McCoy’s Trust list. Not at the level where he would dare talk to them about such an intimate problem. Scotty’s different. He trust Scotty above and beyond. Out of the small group of people on this ship that he calls friends, Scotty is the most mature, in his opinion. Scotty is his best friend. There’s Jim, of course, but that’s different somehow. Jim stands alone. He can’t be compared to the others, and there are Things between them. Things he can’t tell him.

As he expects, Scotty listens to the story without mocking or laughing. Scotty’s good like that. He drops what he is doing to log into the security network, but that’s as far as they get. They find out that all the cameras in all of Sickbay have been down for a full system upgrade. For the past ten days. McCoy thinks this is highly suspicious, but Scotty tells him that they’re working on the whole ship section by section, and that the downtime has been planned for a while now. He suggests that maybe the culprit is in either Security or Engineering, since it looks like they knew this was happening and might have planned to do it while there was less of a risk of getting caught. He also suggests that maybe the captain is right. Maybe it’s not a prank. Maybe someone really is trying tell him how they feel.

McCoy’s response is the same one he gave to Jim.

 

**10.**

_I love how you bitch while you’re healing._

He crumbles the paper up with an insulted snort and tosses it into the desk drawer where he has started to collect them for the past few days. He does not bitch at his patients. It’s not bitching to point out how they could have easily prevented whatever wretched reason they come to him with. Especially the likes of Jim, who runs head-first into certain death and then whines and complains when he is dumped in McCoy’s lap so he can magically puzzle him back together.

It’s not bitching.

It’s not!

 

**11.**

_I love your dimple._

It’s the blush that really gets to him. It’s the knowledge that no matter how hard he has tried to be indifferent to all of this, each and every one still strikes a cord in him. He hates himself for it. Hates that he screwed up his life to the point where he’s so goddamn alone that even a dumb prank like this can fool a smile out of him. Hates himself because he was almost looking forward to finding out what the card would say today. Hates himself for wishing he hadn’t thrown away the earlier ones, and hates himself for holding on to the ones he has.

He doesn’t throw away this one either. It is put away with the others before McCoy goes to find Spock. Maybe he knows something.

It takes him exactly 30 seconds to decide against opening up to Spock. Instead he seeks out Uhura during lunch. He pulls her towards a more private corner of the mess hall, and explains the rough outline of the situation in such a quiet voice that she has to lean in to hear him. Just the outline, though. Just the basic facts. She doesn’t need to know all the details. He’s too embarrassed to tell her everything.

Uhura, queen of gossip, tells him that she hasn’t heard anything at all about any prank, that he’s an idiot for thinking people would do something that cruel to him, and that there are three nurses and one in navigation who have massive crushes on him. She suggests that maybe he should get his own head examined for being so paranoid. He would have said something back, but she’s scary sometimes. He shakes his head and goes back to his shift, but it’s not entirely without a plan.

When his shift ends, he doesn’t leave to go to dinner in Jim’s quarters like he always does. He stays, pulls out a brand new bottle of Saurian brandy and pours himself a drink. Whoever it is that is doing this will show up sooner or later. Either he’ll catch them in the act, or hopefully scare them off for good. Either way, he’ll sit here all night if he has to.

It takes two drinks before he hopes they’re mature enough to come face him.

Three drinks and he is swearing that he’ll punch the lights out of them if this is a prank. At least, if it’s a guy. He ain’t hitting a woman.

He drains his fifth glass while hating himself for wanting this to be real. It takes two more drinks to kill that feeling and remind himself that it can’t be more than something designed to mess with him. He doesn’t belong on this ship and he doesn’t fit in with the crew. He knows this. They’re all good people. He isn’t.

He isn’t worth loving, and there’s no way there’s someone in this crew of over a thousand that loves him. That’s not possible.

However, after he has drained the last of the bottle, when his eyes are sliding shut despite his best efforts to keep them open, and the room is positively spinning, he thinks to himself that, if all this is real, there’s only one person he would want it to be. But it’ll never be him, so it’s better if it’s just a mean prank.

-

When he wakes up, there is a pillow under his head and a blanket tucked around him. He doesn’t know who moved him to the nearest bio bed after he fell asleep at his desk, but his money is on Jim. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them tucked the other in like that. Wouldn’t be the first time Jim picked up his pieces just like McCoy does to him. Jim takes care of him. He’s good like that.

He has a mouth full of cotton when he gets up from the bed and heads for his office. His head is pounding and he would kill a Vulcan for a good cup of coffee, but before that he has to check his desk. He has to know if there’s another card there. If there is, maybe Jim saw who it was?

Except there’s no card.

There’s nothing there but a bottle of cold water, a hypo of painkillers, and a message beeping on his PADD. The message is from Jim and reads: _Coffee’ll just dehydrate you and make the hangover worse. Water. Water’ll fix ya right up!_

He has to laugh. Seeing the words he has served Jim multiple times before being sent back to him is just enough to brighten his morning a little. At least some of his advice sticks with the kid, even if he never actually follows it. Not that McCoy follows it himself. He grabs the hypo and goes in search of coffee. He’ll drink the water later. Right now he just really needs that coffee, he tells himself, but maybe the truth is that part of him is hoping that, if he leaves enough of a window, there might be a card when he comes back.

There isn’t. And McCoy tries to pretend that he is happy it’s over, but there’s an ache in his gut. He wanted it to be real. He wanted it to be from him, but it was all the same load of crap as always. Figures.

 

**12.**

_I love you, Bones_.

McCoy looks up when the card drops down on top of the PADD he was reading. Jim’s there, fidgeting and nervous. He has that look he gets when he is determined to prove that people are wrong about him.

“It’s not a prank,” he says and McCoy can see how he is nervously licking his bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Jim’s looking straight at him, but somehow he manages to avoid McCoy’s eyes at the same time.

“It’s _not_ a prank,” he says again just as McCoy is about to tell him he’s too busy for this.

McCoy knows Jim well enough to know when he is spinning bullshit. He knows that the louder the confidence is, the more crap Jim is serving. He knows that what terrifies Jim the most is being himself, naked like this, because the dumb kid somehow thinks he’s not good enough. But he never thought Jim thought so little of himself that he would consider McCoy to be any sort of option.

“I’ll come talk to you after my shift, Jim. I’m heading to prep for surgery in three minutes. I can’t do this right now.” That’s not an excuse, he really does have surgery, but he can’t deny that he is grateful for the escape. He needs time. He has to let this sink in and he can’t do that with Jim staring at him with those devilishly blue eyes that are almost watering with fear.

“I’ll see you then,” Jim says quietly.

“I’ll come by your room.”

Then the captain leaves and the rest of the day blurs for the doctor. Surgery and patients and nurses. Everything melds together as the day slip by and time runs out.

At the end of his shift, he is still sitting in his office. It’s been half an hour and Jim hasn’t shown up to ask him why it’s taking so long. He knows what that means. He can practically see him pacing in that room, glancing over at the door every few seconds. He’ll just have to wait. McCoy has something he has to finish first. He has been thinking about nothing else all day and since Jim seems to favor having it in writing, he is working on a list of his own. It a list of why they absolutely can not do this, and by the time McCoy gets up to go give it to him, there’s over two hundred points on it. Each and every one is a legitimate issue that will crop up if they become a.. thing.

He doesn’t knock. He rarely does anyway and today he isn’t patient enough for the 3 second wait. He strolls right into Jim’s room, list in hand, rejection on the tip of his tongue…

…but the way Jim’s eyes light up when he sees him erases all of that in an instant.

“I love you too, Jim.”


End file.
